


Tormented and Suffering

by ladysekhmetka



Category: Homestuck, Zero: Shisei no Koe | Fatal Frame III: The Tormented
Genre: Cameras, Gen, Ghosts, Human Sacrifice, Humanstuck, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Horror, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysekhmetka/pseuds/ladysekhmetka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why did I survive?”</p>
<p>Ever since the day he lost his beloved Aradia in an site accident, Sollux Captor has been flipping between disinterest in the world around him and the obsession of keeping her haunted places travel blog going. While at a site in the rural part of Japan, he sees her in the rubble of an old manor. He knows she's dead, but chases her anyway into a terrifying dream that one day he may not wake from.</p>
<p>A Homestuck/Fatal Frame 3 crossover fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Zero Hour - The Calling

**Author's Note:**

> Special Thanks to sabaku_no_gaara_ai for being my creative collaborator and editor.
> 
> Tags will be updated as I go. The basic plot is going to follow the plot of Fatal Frame 3, but the details will differ to fit the characters used.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all begins with a picture of a young woman in the ruins

_There was dust settling around the collapsed timber and he coughed, pain lancing through him as he tried to move. His torso was pinned by something heavy and he struggled to lift his head up, but all he could see was the wooden rubble around him, the ceiling above him, and dark curly hair. “AA?” he croaked, his throat thick with confusion and the sense of dread. He could smell the iron stench of blood in the air and the sounds of the earth settling again. “Aradia?”_

_The weight on him didn't respond, didn't even twitch. He put one shaky hand in that mass of dark curly hair and cried._

“Hey asshole, you done in here?”

Sollux glanced behind him, his camera still held up to take a picture. His friend and assistant Karkat stood there, arms folded and perpetual scowl on his face, framed in the fading light of the afternoon. They both were dressed in comfortable clothing for picture taking in a run down building, but somehow Karkat was managing to deal with the heat of the summer in long sleeves. The room around them was part of an old Japanese manor, old and in shambles. “Not yet, KK. I need a few more pictures of this room. Did you finish getting the caretaker's testimony?”

Karkat sighed irritably. “Yeah, but only because his wife's English is better than my Japanese.”

Sollux snickered at him and replied, “I thought you were suppose to be the hot shot linguist.”

He got two middle fingers from Karkat. “Fuck you asshole. They speak a very distinct dialect around here; you try speaking with them when you've only been exposed to Standard Japanese. I'll be outside when you're done self-flagellating your scrawny ass.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sollux replied, focusing back on the picture he was trying to take. The shot would be an excellent header image for the site when he added the entry for this location. Karkat snorted dismissively and walked off.

He took a few pictures of the old tattered shoji pushed against the equally tattered walls with the digital SLR camera. He slowly spun around, taking pictures of the sections of the room. Suddenly, a voice behind him faintly called out “Hon, look over here!”

His blood ran cold and he spun around, camera still raised. Through the view finder, his finger reflexively pressing the shutter release of the camera, he caught a glimpse of long dark hair and swirling skirts going down the hall leading into the manor proper and around the corner. He lowered his camera and gasped in surprise. “AA?” he called out as he took off down the hallway, “Wait!”

Sollux turned the corner and his knees went wobbly as reality shifted around him. The hallway became a little less run down, the paper of the shoji brightening, and opening up into a little courtyard with gravestones. The area was eerily quiet, bathed in moon light and snow was lightly falling from above. “What the fuck?” he muttered. He took a few tentative steps into the courtyard and noticed a double shoji door on the other side of the courtyard.

Clutching his camera to his chest, he realized that he was somehow holding a flashlight, the only other source of light besides the moon. He took a deep breath, trying to remain calm and cautiously moved forward. He was confused; why was it suddenly night instead of day and winter instead of summer? Was he dreaming? He slid open the door and stepped inside.

The door led to an open room, sectioned off with heavy tall shoji that were tattered and torn. The silence managed to echo loudly, the air heavy with nothing. Sollux found it suddenly hard to breath and he inched forward cautiously. He drew closer to the shoji and would have sworn that he saw motion in the glow of his flashlight. “Hello?”

There was no answer and no movement. He hurriedly started to move around the enclosed space, trying to see clearly or find a way in. He hustled up a set of stairs and turned around a corner. The area in front of him was an intersection of hallways and stairs, including the opening to the shoji enclosed space as well. Tall columns that supported the roof stood in the background, but none of that mattered, because down the hallway in front of him, there was a female figure with long curling hair.

Sollux gasped softly and moved towards the figure as it walked down the hall. “AA?” he called out. He stumbled and when he looked back up, her figure was missing. His breath caught again and he rushed down the hall. There might have been motion at the edges of his flashlight's area of effect, but he was focused on the path ahead of him. He turned the corner and there was a door at the end of the hallway lit with the glow of a single candle. There were other halls leading off, but he knew that he had to go through that door. He approached it more cautiously, suddenly aware how loud his breathing was in the silence.

He went through the door and nearly pissed himself when the light of his flashlight bounced off a large mirror on the wall. The shadows seemed to be moving in odd eldritch patterns as he cautiously moved past the mirror, trying to ignore the pathetic expression on his face. He moved through an odd, s-shaped section of hallway and went to move past a section of wall that was open with a wooden lattice in it. There was a female figure behind it and he opened his mouth to say something, but noticed the figure had the long straight hair and slender frame of a Japanese woman. The lattice blocked his view of her face, but before Sollux could move to get a better look, she faded away.

Dread gripped his body and he felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest. Sollux stepped up closer to the lattice, but there was no sign of the apparition. His breath suddenly became visible as the temperature plummeted and the thickness in the air solidified behind him. He spun around, light flashing in the hall, and came face to face with a man swinging a cleaver at him.

He jumped back, stumbling as the cleaver's path traced a long slice down his arm. Pain blossomed along the arm, and his very soul seemed to burn at the touch, but there was no blood. The man hunched over and an ethereal voice muttered, “You will die, will die.” He suddenly straightened up and charged.

Sollux yelled in terror and took off down the hall, past an open window with snow blowing in, and into another intersection. The man suddenly appeared in front of him, rising from the floor with his cleaver raised. His heart was pounding, his ears ringing, his brain refused to process anything at all and he was running on pure animal instinct as he spun around and raced up a flight of stairs. There is a door, he thought in the small corner of his mind that wasn't a gibbering mess and he threw himself forward, and yanked the door open.

He stumbled through and slammed the door shut. The sensation of dread lifted and he was leaning on the railing of a raised pathway that surrounded a small courtyard with a tree in the middle of it, panting and tears running down his face. He blinked and looked across the courtyard to see the curly haired figure moving towards a door on the other side. “Fuck,” he cursed, pushing himself off the railing to scramble around the walkway. The voices of phantom children called out to him, telling him to stay, but he didn't pause to see what caused them. He rushed up to the door and pushed it open.

On the other side was another courtyard, bigger than the previous one, with a large tori framing a wide pathway leading to another set of doors, The figure stood there and as Sollux moved down a short set of stairs to draw closer, he could finally confirm that it was Aradia. His heart clenched painfully and his stomach dropped like a rock. She looked as lovely as she did on that day, her adorable creepy little smile still on her face. He started to walk forward in dazed awe. It all had to be a dream, she was gone.

As he made the midway point of the courtyard, her smile faded into a confused expression and she turned away to move towards the second set of doors. “No, wait, Aradia, don't leave me!” he called out. He moved, but she was already disappearing through the door. He reached out and pulled them open without a second thought.

Sollux found himself in a hallway, long draping panels of fabrics fluttering in a sudden breeze that he couldn't feel. Behind him was a wall, the door missing. The temperature plummeted as he saw movement. He pressed himself against the wall, breath hanging in the air as a figure that was not Aradia moved towards him between the fluttering fabric.

The figure was naked save for hakama in a deep color he couldn't quite place, its bare chest showing that it was male. Dark tattoos swirled around the chest and arms and wild dark hair hung in his face. Its presence burned in Sollux's mind, a miasma of hatred and rage that caused his lungs to stop working as it drew closer. The last hanging panel flapped across the figure as he closed in. Sollux's heart was beating almost hard enough to pop out of his chest and his fingers scrambled against the wall behind him as he tried to get away.

Suddenly, the bare-chested figure lunged at Sollux, the eyes under the dark hair burning red and the tattoos glowing scarlet hot with his rage. The man's arms slammed against the wall on either side of his head, caging him in as it loomed over him. Sollux made a strangled gasping noise, ducking his head and closing his eyes. There was a moment of vertigo and dizziness and he was on his back, child-sized figures in miko garb surrounding him, kneeling with stakes and hammers poised above him. They placed a stake above his hands and feet, and he was going to _die_ , his heart was going to burst and he just laid there, paralyzed like a sacrificial lamb. The children raised their hammers, ready to drive the stakes in...

…And he started as he was suddenly back in the first hall, hands clenched tightly around his camera, the warm light of the summer afternoon filtering through ruined shoji paper. His breathing was short and panicky, shivers of terror running through him. Then a hand fell on his shoulder and he yelped, jumping to one side. “Fucking hell, Sollux, are you okay? You just took off calling for Aradia like she was still here.”

Karkat looked both irritated and concerned. “You didn't see?” Sollux replied. He turned the view screen of the camera on, showing the last picture of the hallway he took. It showed a blurry female figure and he turned it to show Karkat. “I saw her!”

Sollux watched as Karkat looked at the picture and turned slightly pale. He swallowed slightly and calmly replied, “looks like you caught a ghostly figure, congrats, the place is actually haunted. It'll be great for the site, but it's not Aradia.”

“It's AA, I followed her deeper into the manor and saw her face! She looked the way she did the day she died!” Sollux yelled, and his heart twisting in guilt and shame as he remember that day in the ruins.

“It's not Aradia and that's _impossible_ , I was right behind you, you didn't even leave this damn dust bucket of a hallway.” Karkat said flatly. “You took off like the gates of hell had opened and all the demons were after you, but you stopped on a fucking dime once you hit this point and just stared off into space. Fucking creepy as hell.” Sollux opened his mouth to respond, but closed it without saying a word. Karkat sighed and his face softened. “You look exhausted, Sollux. Let's go back to the hotel. We can come back tomorrow if you need more pics and I can see if the caretaker or his wife know of any other stories.”

Shivering at the sudden chill down his spine, Sollux nodded. He glanced down the hallway one last time before following Karkat out of the rundown manor.

~*~

The hotel they were at would be more accurately called a bar; the village nearest to the old manor was so unlikely to get visitors that it served as the local watering hole more often than not. Karkat was downstairs, trying to work his way through the heavy dialect of the local men to find out more about the area's folklore. Sollux had elected to go to bed early, a migraine forming between his eyes from hearing the phantom death cries of someone in the village all day. He wasn't really in any mood to deal with the company and was tired of people trying to talk to him about how his heterochromia meant he was 'blessed'.

The futon wasn't as comfortable as he was used to, but he soon fell asleep, his brain sinking into the mindless patterns of dreaming. Those patterns resolved themselves into a long, stone-paved path that had old fashioned stone lanterns on either side. He followed it in a haze of snow and non-thought and found himself staring at a large manor, candles lighting up the stairs leading up to the entrance way.

He paused for a moment, gazing at the large building. Aradia was inside, he was sure of it. He had to go and find her and tell her everything and lay his guilt at her feet. Stepping forward as steadily as he could, snow crunching under his feet, he walked up the steps and into the manor.

 


	2. Hour I - The Sign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going deeper into the manor, Sollux finds an old-fashioned bellows camera.

The Manor was just as eerie as ever; the only audible sound was Sollux's breathing. The silence echoed almost audibly. He held an old flashlight in his hand, it's beam of light barely breaking the moonlit gloom of the entryway. There was a door to the left side of the entry, but it was firmly locked with a old fashioned lock with a weird raised mark on it when he checked. A long hallway stretched forward in front of him, so dark he couldn't see the end of it. Candles lit it poorly and he could see the shapes of boxes and furniture covered in sheets and pushed to either side. He steeled his nerves and moved down the hallway, trying to illuminate his path with the flashlight.

He worked his way down the hall, poking at the various boxes and shelves along the edges. The noise of his movement was swallowed by the silence, doing nothing to alleviate it, and he quickly discovered that most of the dressers and shelves were empty. He did find a small wooden container with the kanji for 'medicine' on it and it smelled fragrantly like the herbal tea that Aradia would make for him. He breathed it in, taking comfort in the familiar scent for a moment before putting it in his pocket.

The hallway ended in an odd intersection, three paths coming together in one spot. There was the hallway behind him, a hallway to the right that turned to the left in the darkness, and a short corridor with a door along one side. He wasn't sure which way to go and shrugged as he went down the hallway to the right.

Sollux turned the corner and as he did, an odd sensation crawled across his skin. Looking up, there was a young girl in a yukata standing at the end of the hallway in front of a door. His heart jumped up into his throat and he made a soft strangled noise around it. The faint sound of a girl giggling echoed in the silence and the figure faded away before his eyes. He screwed his eyes shut and swallowed hard around the lump in his throat, trying to calm his racing heart. Nothing else happened and the hallway remain silent and unoccupied beside his own presence.

He was okay, he had this. Sollux decided to keep moving in a grand gesture of masochism, laughing at himself as he walked towards the door. “I can hear KK now,” he murmured to himself. “'Oh brilliant idea, dumb ass, let's go in the direction of the possibly blood thirsty ghost with no way to fucking fight back'.” He snickered hysterically and reached for the door's handle.

Nothing jumped out to get him and he opened the door without incident. The room on the other side contained an old fashioned Japanese-style hearth, a raised wooden platform in the middle of the room with a recessed pit for a fire long gone out in the middle. There was a long staircase going up to a second floor to his left and a door across from him. There were a few candles in here as well, but their light only made the shadows of the room worse with the jumping shadows they cast.

He moved into the room, intent on the door across the way. Halfway across, he realized that there were two female figures in the shadows as the skin crawling sensation ran over him once more. The older one looked up at him and he yelped, nearly dropping the flashlight. The younger was the girl he'd seen earlier. Neither made a noise as they faded away right before his eyes. He smoothed his hand over the back of his neck where his hair was standing on end and let out a shaky breath. He could deal with disappearing apparitions if he just remained calm.

The door on the other side of the room wouldn't open. The only option left was the staircase, but as Sollux moved towards them, movement at the top caught his eye. “Hello?” he called out, shining the light up the stairs, but there was no answer and no further movement. “Masochist,” he chided himself as he started up the stairs.

The second story of the room might have been something else previously, but at the moment, it was filled with boxes and shoji screens folded haphazardly, which made odd shapes when the light played over them. Something caught his eyes, a small shape on the floor that almost seemed to be moving before the light touched it. It called to him and he walked over to the object and knelt to pick it up.

It was an old fashion camera, the type with bellows. A tingle of energy traveled up his hands when he touched it. There were characters around the edge of the lens that were faded and hard to read. A folded up scrap of paper was stuffed under one of the decorative metal accents. Sollux worked it out carefully and unfolded it. In neat precise hiragana were the words 'This camera takes pictures of impossible things that shouldn't exist and purifies them. As it absorbs spirits, its exorcism powers become stronger, but it needs film to do so.'

Sollux frowned. A camera that exorcised ghosts was the stuff of folktale and legends, the kind of thing that would make Aradia's eyes light up. It was ridiculous and stupid, but he had seen people disappearing before his eyes; he had seen Aradia walking the halls of this dream manor. Why not a camera that could kill ghosts? If he ran into another hostile ghost like the one in his day dream, it would be better than nothing. Dreams didn't make sense anyway. He shook his head. “Should have dreamed up something more modern than a bellows camera. How does film even work?” he muttered as he examined the camera.

He lifted it up and looked through the viewfinder. He was surprised to find some kind of circle frame like one would find in a more modern camera with six odd markings around the outer edge of the circle. There was a filament on the top and a number in the bottom right corner that read fifty. He turned in place and noticed the filament flare to life in blue and then die as he kept turning. He turned back the other way and the filament lit back up. Sollux wondered if there was something there and took a step forward, moving towards the corner. The filament grew brighter as he drew close to it and the circle frame started to glow once he was almost standing in the corner. There didn't seem to be anything there, but there was the familiar sensation of something crawling over his skin. He pressed the shutter release, which was loud in the silence and the camera took a picture. The afterimage of a woman crouched over and crying burned into his retinas and the camera seemed to hum as the glowing filament dimmed until it was out. The fifty in the corner changed to forty nine.

Mind racing at the implications, he almost didn't notice the voice speaking to him in the back of his head. When he realized what he was hearing, not the voice of someone in the room but the voice of someone doomed, he froze. He'd never heard a voice in his dreams before, it was one of the few times he could be assured that he wouldn't have to deal with hearing the voices of people about to die. He couldn't breathe and his fingers gripped the camera tight. He fought the panic rising in him; this wasn't real, he was just dreaming, he had to be. Maybe hearing the voice was part of the dream and if he found the source, it would stop. He couldn't hear it very well, the muttering soft and mumbled, so the person in question wasn't in immediate danger or close.

There was another door leading out the room and as Sollux moved towards it, he could hear the voice become a little clearer. Taking this as a good sign, he moved into the hallway on the other side. A light ringing noise broke the silence and Sollux nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard it. He moved into the hallway and down to a t-shaped intersection. The voice and the chiming noise competed with each other and he decided to go to the right. The hall turned to the left once, then again. There was an odd lattice at the end of the hall, but on the left there was a small opening about half way down that the chiming noise seemed to be coming from.

Sollux moved toward the opening and peered in carefully. There was a young girl dressed like a shrine maiden facing the opposite wall, holding a spike against a doll pinned to the wall and hammering the spike through it, the noise ringing through the room. He opened his mouth to say something and a second girl popped up on the other side of the opening, staring back at him.

He fell back with a stifled shriek, heart racing and eyes scrunching shut. Nothing else happened though, the ringing continuing unabated. He moved away from the opening; no way he was going to look back through it. Knowing his luck, they would chase him down with hammer and stake like the guy with the cleaver did during his day dream.

He could still hear the voice mumbling in his head, but now he could hear it more . “I didn't ask for this, I didn't want this! Someone, help me please!” it muttered. The voice sounded female and scared.

He moved down the hall and the tension in the air intensified, the voice clearing even further. When he got to the lattice and peered through it, he saw a young woman with short, stylish hair sitting on the floor, hunched over and shaking. She didn't fade away, didn't move beyond tremors. Was she an apparition too? Sollux pulled up the camera and the filament glowed when she was in frame. Centering the woman in the glowing frame, he took a picture. An afterimage of the photo lingered and the woman didn't disappear or react, nor did the circle frame and filament glow any further.

So maybe she wasn't a ghost. “Hey!” Sollux shouted. “Dumb ass! Can you hear me?” No response from her, but he could see her lips moving and the voice in his head continued. She was just far enough that he couldn't reach her through the lattice, even stretching his arm as far as he could. He looked at the rest of the room and could see a sectioned off area and an open doorway that looked out into a passageway. “Fuck, don't go anywhere, I'm going to find a way to get to you.”

He quickly found out that the hallway was one big loop and there weren't any other doors besides the one he came through. He shivered and went back through the door. The upper floor of the hearth room was much the same, maybe a few degrees cooler than before. The lower room was much colder and when his foot hit the raised wooden floor of the hearth, the light of the flashlight fell on two female figures standing next to the hearth, one younger, one older. “Have you... seen him?”

Sollux nearly dropped the camera and flashlight, by the time he recovered both, the figures were gone. He scanned the entire room with his light, but they nowhere to be seen. The tension in the room was like a piano wire pulled too tight, and he could see his exhaled breaths in the cold air. There was no movement, no sound. He moved slowly through the room, his heart beating like a trapped bird. The locked door still wouldn't open, so he went back toward the door he'd came through. He was reaching out to the door handle when he heard right next to his ear, “Where is my husband?”

He cried out in panic and spun around with arms raised, but there was nothing there, nothing visible or physical, not even a presence. His pulse thudded in his ears and he turned back to open the door. The little girl he'd seen moments ago was there and she asked, “Have you seen my father?”

The tension in the air managed to ratchet up even higher, and Sollux shrieked. He stepped back from the door, and a hand came down on his shoulder. Nausea and weakness flooded through him and it felt like his energy was draining away. He twisted and pulled away from that touch, turning to see the older woman there, drifting nearer, arms stretched out towards him. “Where is he?”

He stepped back and was suddenly aware that the camera in his hands seemed to be humming with energy. He pulled it up to look through the viewfinder and the filament was glowing red, the kanji around the circle frame lighting up and shifting. The woman drifted closer and the circle frame suddenly went red, the camera focusing in on the ghost. Sollux flinched and mashed the shutter release hard.

The woman was nearly on top of him, but whatever force powered the camera seemed to hurt the woman. Will-o'-the-wisp orbs of light separated from the woman and they were pulled into the camera. The afterimage that burned into his mind showed the ghost's face twisted into a rictus of rage and he almost panicked at the overwhelming hatred in that expression. The woman bent over in pain, almost seeming to hug herself, and disappeared. He could still hear her though, calling for her husband, and the tension didn't fade.

The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end and he dove to the side, the woman nearly grabbing him as she charged past him again. He aimed the camera in her direction, but she faded away the moment he pressed the shutter, resulting in just a picture of the floor. Sollux cursed and looked around, keeping the camera raised so he could easily look back through the viewfinder once he located the woman. He didn't want her touching him a second time.

She reappeared by the stairs and he looked through the viewfinder again, letting the camera charge. She moved in, reaching out to him and he waited until the circle frame focused in again before pressing the shutter release. The camera took the picture, and the woman cried out wordlessly as she faded into a shower of orbs that the camera absorbed. The tension in the air bled away and the temperature normalized.

Sollux dropped to his knees, shaking with adrenaline and residual panic. He struggled to get his breathing under control. “Fuck,” he swore softly, hugging himself. He didn't know what the ghost had done to him when she touched him, but it had hurt and he still felt weak from the attack.

He shifted, felt something in his pocket poking and pulled out the wooden container from earlier. The smell alone made the tightness in his chest loosen and when he pried it open, he found what looked to be a cough drop inside. He sniffed it and placed it experimentally on his tongue. The taste was okay, but he immediately felt a bit better. Chuckling to himself, Sollux said quietly, “Ha, it's like I'm in a video game...”

After a few moments, he felt much better, and he took a deep breath before pushing himself up. He couldn't quit now. He exited the room, this time unmolested by the ghosts of little girls.

When he entered the main hallway, the voice in his head came back, clear as it was upstairs. He moved past the turn in the hall back towards the intersection. As he approached, he could hear mumbling from around the corner of the short corridor and he could see a person's legs sticking out into the intersection. He approached cautiously and saw the woman from upstairs sitting against the wall. She had odd markings that looked like tattoos in the shape of serpents and leaves across just about every inch of skin he could see. She was muttering to herself, “I didn't want to survive them. I should have died with them...”

“Hey,” he said, leaning over so their heads were at the same level.

“It would have been better if I hadn't made it...” she continued to ramble, ignoring him completely.

“Are you deaf or just stupid?” he said flatly, reaching out to touch her. She looked up just as he was about to touch her, shrieked, and scrambled away from him to sit in the intersection, facing down the long hall toward the entryway. “What the hell?”

The woman was looking at him with terror in her eyes, shaking. Suddenly, her eyes latched on to something further down the long hallway and she froze up, her mouth hanging open in terror. In Sollux's head, her voice was screaming bloody murder, in the tones of terror that only one looking at their imminent death could produce. Sollux stepped toward her and foolishly looked down the hall.

Glowing red eyes filled with burning rage regarded him from about halfway down the hall. He backed up until he hit the wall, standing next to the woman, teeth clenched tight as his heart rate skyrocketed. Slowly, those eyes moved closer, and the man they belong to resolved in the gloom, the red of his tattoos almost glowing against his dusky skin. Sollux made a soft noise of fear as the crushing force of the man's presence made itself known. The woman next to him jerked suddenly and moved, scrabbling around him and away, deeper into the manor. Her voice no longer echoed in Sollux's head.

The heated gaze focused on him entirely now, keeping him pinned in place. The man continued his slow approach, and Sollux found that he couldn't move; he could barely breathe. He blinked once, and the man was suddenly no longer there, the tension started to bleed away slowly. He blinked again, and the man reappeared right in front of him, reaching out with red-tattooed hands.

It was enough to break the paralysis of his body and he dodge the lunge, taking off down the hall toward the entrance. He could feel the man chasing him, reaching out and missing by the barest of margins. His lungs burned and his legs screamed in pain, but terror kept him moving forward. He was only feet from the entrance, a few steps from escaping, when fingers, hot as iron brands, grazed his right shoulder.

A confusing jumble of images and sounds tumbled through his head. He saw family lost, people mourning, a shrine, a lover calling to him, blood splattered across the ground, tattoos on his arms before it whited out to nothing, the words 'Let me sleep... forever' echoing in a mournful baritone in his head. His hands hit the doors and they swung open wide, letting him out.

Sollux sat bolt upright on his futon with a muffled yelp, the blankets tangled around his legs and feet. Sweat dripped down his face and bare back. His breathing was fast and uneven. His shoulder flared with pain and he gasped out loud, pressing a hand to the spot . He craned his neck to look at it; he couldn't tell for sure in the dark, but it looked like maybe he'd been bitten or scraped his skin.

“What the hell?” mumbled Karkat from his own futon. He sat up sleepily, rubbing his eyes. “Were you having one of those nightmares again?”

Sollux glanced at his shoulder; the mark had vanished. “Yeah, I'll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” There was doubt in his voice.

“I'm fine, KK,” Sollux scowled, “What time is it?”

Karkat checked his phone and yawned. “It's like only six in the fucking morning, why are we up so damned early again?”

“Go back to sleep then.”

“Like hell,” Karkat scowled, “This futon is older than the house we visited today, smells like mothballs and old people, and lumpier than the curry Gamzee...” he trailed off into silence, rubbing his wrists thoughtfully. “Anyway, what were you dreaming about?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Sollux replied, automatically on the defensive. His dreams were usually of that day in the ruins, but he really didn't want to talk about ghosts and mystical cameras either. “If we're up, we should probably get going. We can be back before dinner time if we leave now.”

Karkat frowned, concerned look on his face. “You're not going all hikikomori again and shut yourself in your computer room again and don't talk to people for days on end, are you? Because I'm not dealing with your corpse when you suffocate under the pile of energy drink cans and junk food wrappers. Do you know who they blame first after the family? The roommate. Not doing it!”

“Don't be such a worry wart,” Sollux replied snidely.

“I'll stop being a worry wart when you stop being a brain-addled disaster and have gained the self-preservation of at least a puppy, which will never happen in my shitty lifetime.”

“You're not my mom,” Sollux as he pulled on a shirt.

Karkat rolled his eyes and kicked off his covers. “Thank fuck for that.”

~*~

They arrived back at the house they shared, a small two story building with an even small yard. It would have been a cheap place in any other country, but with the scarcity of living space in Japan, it spoke of being well-to-do. Aradia's inheritance had covered the cost of the house and land when she and Sollux had first moved to the country. Sollux had wanted to sell it after Aradia died, but Karkat had managed to talked him out of it. The bedrooms were up on the second floor and everything else was on the first.

Sollux was pretty glad Karkat had come to live with them after his 'brother', Gamzee, had gone missing. If he had been alone in the house after Aradia's death, he probably wouldn't have survived more than a week. Karkat really was the best friend he'd ever had. He'd taken over housekeeping and bullied Sollux into eating and taking care of himself even while he'd been dealing with his own loss. Responding to some random tech question from a foul-mouthed boy all those years ago had really paid off.

Sollux dropped his bag on the floor of the bedroom that he and Aradia had shared. He hadn't changed it at all, the furniture stood in the same place; the western style bed with its burgundy and white fleur-de-lis comforter, and the vanity she had sat at every morning. He decided that he would unpack later. The bed sang its siren song to him. Although he didn't sleep much anymore, it was still nice to lay in their bed, wrapped in the comforter, and just not think about things for a while. He resisted the urge, and went back downstairs.

Karkat was in the kitchen, going through the mail that had piled up on their three day trip. “There's a letter from Fish-face for Aradia,” Karkat said without looking up, tossing the letter on the counter of the pass-through between kitchen and living room. “When are you going to tell him what happened?”

Sollux ignored the question and picked up the letter. 'Fish-face' was their nickname for one of Aradia's colleagues, a history major by the name of Eridan. The first time the two of them had met the guy was at a conveyor belt sushi joint, and the pretentious douche had stuffed himself stupid. “Shit, only an asshole would still send mail.”

Karkat laughed, then gave a wicked little smirk. “He's such a stickler for traditions, 'like a proper Japanese man should be'. It's like he was born a century later than he should have been.”

Sollux snickered and tore the letter open.

_Dia, I hope you got the package I sent you. It's related to the case I'm looking into involving my friend Feferi. I've done research into some folklore and found a legend about a curse where the victims had similar symptoms to the ones Fef is showing. Look into it for me and let me know. ~Eridan._

“Hey KK, did we get a package from him?”

Karkat nodded as he put the rest of the mail into the shred pile. “Yeah, I put it in Aradia's study. Don't disappear on me though, I'm going to start dinner. It should be ready in half an hour.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sollux replied. He wandered back up the stairs; Aradia had turned the third bedroom into a study instead of using one of the rooms downstairs. It was down the hall past Karkat's room. This was another room that hadn't changed since her death and he could still smell the lingering scent of her perfume. The computer was turned off and the writing desk still buried the papers and folders she had been working on last. On top of them sat a brown box, taped and tied with string. Eridan's elegant handwriting covered the outside of it, the kanji and hiragana neat and precise, but the English letters a little on the shaky side. Sollux grabbed a letter opener and attacked the layers of tape and string.

“Do you need a hand sweetie?” said Aradia behind him.

“No, I got...” he turned toward her voice without thinking, but Aradia wasn't there. “this... shit.”

He carefully put the letter opener down and took a deep breath, fighting back the tears forming in his eyes. It was hard and unfair and he wanted her back. He wanted their future together and everything that it entailed back. He sat down at the desk and hid his face in his arms as tears streamed down his face. After a few moments, he managed to get himself under control, wiping his face. He didn't want Karkat to know about his little pity party. He returned to the box, working it open.

Nestled in the newspaper and bubble wrap was an old fashioned bellows camera.

Heart in his throat, he picked it up. It was almost the same as the one in his dream, but appeared to be an older model. The inscriptions were faded and the metal fittings were scuffed, like it had been well-used before being put in the box. He lifted it to look through the viewfinder. There was a filament at the top on this camera, but the frame marks made a partial circle instead of a full one, like parentheses. The shutter release didn't work when he tried to press it.

He put the camera down to make sure there wasn't anything else in the box. He found a handwritten note in passable English. _Dia, I found this in an abandoned village near where Fef's sister Meenah went missing. Fef flipped out when she saw it, but wouldn't tell me what was wrong. Hold on to it for me, since you know more about antiques – Eridan._

His phone went off and he pulled it out to see that he had received an email. The sender field was blank, and he almost deleted it and the attached picture automatically. He decided to open it though, and nearly had a heart attack. It was the picture of the woman he took in his dream, weird markings all over her body. He glanced at the broken camera suspiciously and moved it to a shelf of the desk's attached hutch. He moved the box it was mailed in as well and started to flip through the files and notes on Aradia's desk. It looked like she had been looking into Japanese urban legends about lost villages, people being spirited away, and massacres revolving around odd cultist rituals. She and Eridan seemed to have focused on one legend in particular, a rumor about a manor that appeared in dreams before the dreamer inexplicably vanished. They had found cases as old as the late 1800s, but the most recent of them had involved a mother and daughter who had been searching for their missing husband and father. A neighbor had broken into their house after no one had seen or heard from them in days, but nothing in the house had been disturbed; the only odd thing they found was two piles of black soot.

Sollux was in the middle of reading a note about the abandoned mansion that one of Eridan's contemporaries had gone to research (the one Gamzee had tagged along to help with the heavy lifting and had gone missing during) when Karkat stepped into the room. “Hey, food's ready, dumb... What the fuck is that?”

Sollux followed his gaze. “It's a camera, KK. Duh.”

“Shut up, ass goblin!” Karkat snarled back. “I know it's a fucking camera! My eyes work perfectly fine and I do possess at least two brain cells that usually work at the same time, which is more than I can say about you. What the fuck is it doing in this house?”

“Eridan sent it to AA.” he replied, a little surprised at how angry Karkat sounded. “What's the big deal, why do you even care?”

Karkat was pale under his dusky skin. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a raspy sound. He shut his mouth with a click, glared and replied, “Whatever, I just don't even... no, fuck that, I'm not talking about it. Food's ready.”

“Fine,” Sollux replied. He put the file down and stood, his back popping after sitting hunched over. “Hey, can you do me a favor, Mister 'friends with everyone'?”

“What?” Karkat asked suspiciously.

Sollux picked up his phone and forwarded the picture of the woman to him. “Can you see if anyone knows this woman?”

Karkat glanced at the photo with a scowl. “You know her?”

Licking his lips nervously, he shook his head. “Not really, the pic was just sent to me and she looks familiar.”

They had a staring contest for a few moments before Karkat broke it and nodded. “She does look familiar,” Karkat agreed. “Fine, why the fuck not. I'll let you know if anyone knows her.”

~*~

After dinner, Sollux went to lay down in bed. He wasn't planning on sleeping, and was used to being cursed with the worst case of insomnia known to man since the accident, but the bed was comfortable and he could almost pretend that everything was still right with the world. This time, however, he fell asleep, mind drifting into slumber before sudden random images of people in traditional Shinto outfits, shrines, and young children surrounding him with stakes flickered through his head. Then he was suddenly in the manor's entryway again, the covered boxes and furniture in the hall before him, the unnerving silence still echoing all around. The flashlight and camera were back in his hands.

He bit his lip and tried to breathe. The tattooed man was no longer in the hallway, he should be fine. Sollux was in this place for a reason. He took a deep breath and headed back into the manor. As he approached the odd three-way intersection, he saw a young woman darting off to the left. He followed after her, fairly certain it was the young woman from earlier. The door in the short corridor wasn't locked and he stepped through.

The room on the other side was large, but partitioned off with tall sliding divider into six smaller areas. In the middle sections, there was a bit of paper that looked oddly out of place on the floor. Sollux picked it up. Written on it were the words 'I didn't mean to survive, please wake me up' in jittery hiragana that was hard to read. He looked around again after reading the note and found some camera film as well. He stuffed it into his pocket for later use.

There was another door that led out of the room, and as his flashlight passed over it, he would have sworn the door was just swinging shut. He moved towards it cautiously and pushed it open just in time to see someone running up the stairs that were on the other side. “Hey! Wait!” he called out, hurrying to follow.

The stairs led up to another hallway. Sollux saw the figure of a woman rounding the corner towards the left. He licked his lips nervously and followed, expecting to get jumped the moment he turned the corner. The turn led into an alcove with a door on the left side. There was a noticeable blur or shimmer in the air around it.

He tried the handle, and although it turned, the door wouldn't budge. It felt like there was something on the other side of the door holding it shut. He put his other hand on the door to push and felt some kind of energy tingle up his arm. He stepped back in surprise, shaking his arm to try to get rid of the energy that clung to it. Unsure what else to do, he raised the camera to look through it at the door. The circle frame glowed and when he took a picture, the afterimage wasn't of a person or a door, but instead a location, a room with a staircase leading upwards. He was fairly certain it wasn't the small room he'd just come from.

Sollux growled in irritation. Guessing he needed to hunt this location down, he turned from the door and stepped back out into the hallway proper. “I really am in a goddamned video game, and it's the shittiest, lamest game in existence.” he whined to himself, if just to break the silence of the manor. “What's next, an impossible escort quest? Fuck that, I'll let the stupid ghosts get me first...”

The hallway led down into murky dimness, but Sollux could see another set of stairs leading up at the far edge of his flashlight's reach. He moved towards them, but he wasn't even past the flight of stairs he'd come up from when he realized that this wasn't the one he was looking for. The hall continued on though, so he moved past the staircase and kept going. His flashlight fell on an opening in the floor and he found a third staircase leading down into the darkness below. Steeling his nerves, he descended.

He found himself in a small room lit with a single candle. Every creak of the wooden floor echoed as he walked across it. Shelving stood along one wall, piled high with tattered and moldy boxes. He was filled with a heavy sense of dread and as he turned to face the staircase, he knew that this was the place from the picture.

He looked around the room for any additional clues, but all he found was a small locked door with a square symbol on the lock and what looked like a camera attachment. He chewed his lip in concentration as he tried to fit the attachment on the camera without breaking either. Taking a picture had led him here, maybe that was the key. The attachment finally slid in place with a click and he stepped back to look at the room through the viewfinder. There was a man standing right in front of him, the same weird blurring effect around him as the door. The circle frame glowed and he took the picture. The man dissolved slowly in a shower of orbs and Sollux realized that there was an additional little circular bulb in the center under the filament. It didn't seem to do anything and there wasn't a helpful memo to explain things this time.

There didn't seem to be anything else in the room, and he hoped that he'd be able to get through the blocked door and hopefully find the woman from the previous dream. He went back up the stairs and started to backtrack to the door at the end of the hall. He made it past the other two staircases and was nearly to the alcove when the apparition of the older woman he had previously fought reappeared and attacked.

Her arms reached out toward him and Sollux made an undignified squeal of terror as he twisted away, her fingers passing just inches from his shoulder. He pulled up the camera, but she disappeared before he could center her in the circle frame. “Where is he,” she cried from behind him, and he whirled around to find her once again moving towards him. The new bulb started to blink rapidly as she reached for him and he took a picture in surprise. The woman cried out in pain as she was knocked back. That was new. The camera bulb flashed again, but she disappeared before he could take another picture. “Have you seen him?” she called out.

“Like hell I have,” he muttered back, shifting his weight as he looked around. She reappeared to his left and he focused on the ghost through the camera's viewfinder again. “Stop asking.”

He managed to take a second picture and the ghostly woman's presence faded away. Sollux lowered the camera cautiously, waiting to make sure she was truly gone. His heart was pounding in his chest and his breathing was heavy. That wasn't as bad as the last time, but it was still unnerving.

When he approached the door, he could suddenly hear the muttering of the woman in his head again. The haze around the door was gone, and it didn't resist as he opened it. On the other side was a corridor that led to the right. He followed it around the corner to a doorway that opened up into a room. One he had seen before from the other side of the lattice that made up the right side wall. Thin paper hangings created a square space in the far left corner that contained a futon with a vaguely human shape under the futon's quilt that Sollux was not going to investigate.

The single occupant, the short haired woman from before, was pressed against the far wall, sitting with her knees pulled up, and her arms wrapped around her legs. As he approached her, he could hear her muttering to herself still. He crouched down by her feet, which were bare and covered with the same red markings as the rest of her body. “Hey, can you hear me?”

She didn't look up or pause in her muttering. Sollux looked around and saw that there was a small, slightly scorched booklet next to her feet. He picked it up and realized it was a passport. He opened it up. The name on it was typed in Roman letters and katakana: Kanaya Maryam.

“Kanaya,” he pronounced carefully. “Is that you?” The woman's muttering continued with no sign of recognition. Sollux sighed irritably. He wasn't sure what to do now. He couldn't remember if there were any other doors that weren't locked. Maybe he'd check the stairs that led up from the hallway. He stood and turned to walk away.

Suddenly, the muttering behind him stopped and the voice in his head grew quiet. “Please...” said the woman behind him. Sollux turned sharply to look at her, but she hadn't moved. “Wake me up, I didn't do anything wrong.”

Sollux opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of his bedroom. The soft sound of rain falling came from outside and he sat up groggily, rubbing his eyes. The light from outside was weak and for a second, he contemplated just rolling over and going back to sleep.

Then pain lanced through his shoulder and he hissed, suddenly wide awake, and clapped his hand over it. He tried to look at the area through watering eyes, but could only see what looked like a weird, mottled red bruise covering his shoulder blade. The pain dissipated slowly and as it did, Sollux unclenched his teeth. It was the same spot where he'd been touched by that red-eyed man and this time, the mark wasn't fading away. He slid out of bed and walked over to Aradia's vanity to look at it in the mirror. When he glanced over his shoulder at the reflection of his bare back, the mottling of the mark resolving into what looked to be coiling loops of _something_ and leaf like shapes. The mark's colors were mostly red, but the edges were tinted with a hint of bruise-blue.

His blood ran cold when he realized that the pattern was very similar to the ones on the red-eyed man and the short-haired woman. Sollux took a deep breath and stepped away from the vanity. He didn't have enough information to know what to expect, so he tried to put it in out of his mind. He grabbed a shirt and pulled it on over his head. He'd think about it later.

The rest of the house was quiet; Karkat must have stepped out because he wasn't someone who dealt well with silence and would play music or even talk to himself to break it up. He walked down to the living room and into the kitchen where there was a note on the fridge in bold letters that read 'DON'T FORGET TO EAT, ASSHOLE!'. When Sollux opened the refrigerator, there was a wrapped plate of triangle cut tea sandwiches on the top shelf that he was sure Karkat would hotly deny making just for him. He grabbed the plate and retreated into his computer room to do some work. The new images from the latest photo shoot needed to go up, and the coding on the main page was glitching for some reason, which needed to be fixed yesterday.

His computer room held a server in addition to his work computer and a mini-fridge as well. It was the coolest room in the whole house, mostly due to it not having any windows to the outside world. Aradia had teasingly called it the 'nerd cave'. He kept his gaming laptop in here as well when it wasn't in use, although he rarely played games in the computer room. He sat at his desk, pulled an energy drink from the fridge, and got to work.

The code error on the main page was fixed before he even finished the sandwiches. Opening a second drink, he plugged the memory card from the camera into his computer and started to flip through the images. He marked the best ones as he went, and when he finally reached the last of the image files, he found himself lingering on the one with the hazy female figure. He breathed in quickly once, fighting a sudden, overwhelming sense of loss before minimizing all of his open programs. His desktop was pretty bare since this was his work computer, but there was one icon that was not a program. His cursor lingered over the video file indecisively.

His phone went off suddenly, and he jumped, clicking the icon on accident. He juggled the phone while trying to close the media player that popped up. From the computer's speakers, a familiar conversation began to play. “Okay, camera's rolling AA” said his own voice.

“Hee hee, how do I look?” replied Aradia from the video.

Sollux cursed, drowning out the next sentence on the video, finally killing the program and answering the phone. “Hello?”

There was a moment of silence before Karkat's surly voice accused, “You were watching it again.”

“No!” Sollux replied defensively, wondering, not for the first time, if Karkat had a sixth sense that let him know these kinds of things. “I was working on the site.”

“Okay...” Karkat replied, suspicion in his voice.

Time to change topic. “Thanks for the sandwiches.”

“I didn't make them just for you, asshole! What if I had plans to invite guests over and was going to be an excellent goddamned host and feed them some damn traditional English tea sandwiches, which, by the by, are gross and I don't know how you could possibly like them.” Karkat replied hotly. Sollux could see his face flushing in his mind's eye. “Now shut up, I found your Yamada Hana, so be grateful. She's a survivor of that plane crash a month ago. Some really freaky circumstances, I mean, talk about winning the fucking lotto, she survived because she was ejected from the plane before it crashed and landed on an arbor, whatever the fuck that is. Her real name is Maryam Kanaya, no wait, she's a foreigner, so Kanaya Maryam.”

Sollux felt his breath catch in his throat. “She's alive?”

“Yeah, but she's still in the hospital, recovering. When I called, the nurse I talked to said she's not doing well and I can't blame her. She lost all of her family and her best friend in the crash.”

“Which hospital?” Sollux asked.

“Uh, she's at Sendai Memorial in Haifuku. Why, are you going to go see her?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

Karkat sighed. “It's not like you to care about much of anything besides the web site since we got back from India, not that you were a social butterfly to begin with.”

Sollux debated telling Karkat about the dreams for half a moment before deciding that the other man was worried enough about him. “I guess I'm just curious. I don't know where that picture was sent from after all.”

“Fine,” Karkat replied shortly. “You leaving now? Are you going to be back home in time for dinner?”

“Yes, and I should be. Haifuku isn't that far from here if I take the train.”

“Fine, just don't do anything reckless, dumb ass,” Karkat replied. “I will flip my shit. I don't want to have to bail you out of trouble again.”

~*~

Sendai Memorial, as it turned out, was a large, public hospital. The receptionist directed Sollux to the third floor when he asked where Kanaya Maryam was being roomed. He managed to not wince during the entire exchange; the voices of doomed patients were obnoxiously loud and piercing in their proximity. He could already feel a headache forming.

The young nurse at the third floor station checked his ID and made a note in the visitors log. “Ms. Maryam doesn't get many visitors,” she said conversationally, “Mostly reporters and the like, but she hasn't been awake in nearly four days. She's not responsive at all, so I hope you weren't expecting to talk with her.”

“That's fine,” Sollux replied as he took his ID back. He winced as one very familiar voice grew louder in his head. “You never know, right?”

The nurse smiled at him and said, “Well, be sure to stop back by before you leave, okay?”

Sollux smiled weakly back, and followed the directions she had given him and the sound of the voice. The door to the room was slightly ajar and he slid in. It was a shared room, so there were multiple beds, but no one else seemed to be roomed here at the moment. He held his breath as he moved down to end and the only occupied bed. It contained the short-haired young woman and from this distance, he could have sworn there were odd markings across her skin. “Fuck,” he swore, but when he moved closer to the bed, her skin was clear and unblemished, although it was practically gray in pallor.

She was asleep, on her back with the sheets pulled up to her neck. There were several vases of flowers on the night stand, but not much else. Sollux walked around to the side of the bed, gaze transfixed on her features. The voice in his head grew more and more frantic, echoing 'Please wake me up!' over and over again. He reached out to touch her arm and pain suddenly lanced through his head as her voice screamed in agony. He squeezed his eyes shut against it, and when he opened them again, he could see swirling marks of red racing across her neck and face. The marks reached her eyes and they popped open wide, the marks even continuing along her sclera and irises. There was a sudden cacophony of noise, static, and tortured screaming in his mind, and he grabbed his head and collapsed on the floor in pain. The sensation of falling a very long distance over came him and just when he was certain he was going to pass out, the sounds suddenly cut out and Kanaya's familiar voice said very softly in his ear, _I don't want to see him anymore_.

Then, there was nothing but the silence of the hospital room around him and the impending migraine that followed hearing multiple voices. He fought down the urge to vomit and tried to breathe slowly. He struggled to rise to his feet, his heart racing in his chest, and looked at the bed.

Kanaya was gone. Sollux glanced around the room, but didn't see her. He checked the bed again; the sheets were still in place as if she were still lying there and there was a weird dark spot on the pillow. On impulse, he yanked the sheets back. Underneath it, there was a silhouette of of a human shape in black ashes. His knees threatened to give way again and he grabbed the metal footrest of the bed as his head swam. There wasn't a smell of smoke or anything like you might expect with spontaneous combustion, but that was the only thing he could think of within the realm of reason. He reached out to touch the substance before he thought better of it; he hadn't touched anything else besides the sheets and the footrest. The last thing he needed was the authorities thinking he was the cause of her disappearance. He pushed away from the bed and called out “Nurse!”

~*~

It was long past dinner time when Sollux finally arrived home. Karkat looked up from watching the news on the TV and said, “Well, I'm glad to see they didn't arrest your ass. Did you see her before she pulled her vanishing act?”

Sollux made a face at him. “Yes, I did.” he replied as he flopped on the couch next to him and stole the remote. “And no, I don't want to talk about it. My head is splitting.”

Karkat snatched the remote back. “Fine,” he replied, nostrils flaring. “You should go take a shower, you reek. How did you manage to not offend prissy Japanese sensibilities and get deported back to Korea for being a mouth-breathing, filthy foreigner?”

“My charming personality,” Sollux shot back, closing his eyes.

His friend laughed at his response and said, “Yeah, okay, but really, you should. You'll feel better.” Sollux sighed and got back up. “Your dinner is in the fridge, so don't forget to eat. If your head hurts that much, you should go lay down.”

“Yes mom,” Sollux mock-whined as he moved towards the stairs.

“Shut up, dumb ass,” Karkat grumbled fondly.

He got a change of clothes and headed back downstairs to the Western style bathroom. The warm water was soothing; he could feel his body relaxing and his headache diminishing slightly. He could still see the odd red mark on his shoulder out of the corner of his eye, and maybe it was just him, but it seemed more... defined. He finished washing, got out and dried off. After getting dressed in a clean t-shirt and pajama bottoms, he went back into the living room on his way to the kitchen. Karkat was still there. “I think I'm going to bed early,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

Karkat glanced up at him, and his normally mahogany eyes caught the light just right for a moment, glowing red. Sollux flinched and drew in a sharp breath, but the moment passed and he nodded. “Sure,” he replied, managing to keep his voice stead as he turned to pull his food, beef curry over rice, out of the fridge.

“Don't stay up all night,” Karkat said firmly.

' _Not my mom_ ' went through his head, but all he said was “Yeah, okay.” Sollux was totally going to stay awake for as long as he could. He tossed the plate into the microwave and started it up. “I'm just going to work on the site some more.”

“No video either,” Karkat replied in a warning tone.

“Good night, KK,” Sollux replied flatly. He fished a spoon out of the cutlery drawer, pointedly ignoring the video comment.

Karkat sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, good night.”

The sound of Karkat walking up the stairs was unusually loud in the kitchen. Sollux waited impatiently for his food to finish reheating, and when the microwave beeped, he grabbed the plate and retreated back to the computer room. He did actually work on the site, answering a few emails and posting the pictures he'd sorted earlier. His eyes fell on that final picture again and he stifled a yawn before adding it to the pictures to be uploaded.

When he was done, he was suddenly faced with his desktop and the video file again, his fingers itching to click on it even as his brain warned at him not to. He'd only seen it all the way through once, in that dingy interrogation room in India; since then, Sollux couldn't bear to watch it all the way to the end. He clicked the file and waited for it to load.

“Okay, camera's rolling, AA”

In the video, Aradia grinned, smoothing her hair. “Hee hee, how do I look?”

“Amazing, as always.” his voice off-screen replied.

Aradia laughed again, expression wide and open. She twirled in place, arms spread. “Hello, our viewing audience! We're recording from on-site for the first day of our investigation of the Dharmic Caves. It's pretty quiet so far, but who knows what kind of adventure we'll have today!”

In the present, Sollux bit his lip, fighting back tears. In the video, Sollux said, “You should talk about the legends first before we go anywhere.”

Aradia grinned and Sollux felt his heart clench in his chest. She had been so happy on that day, brimming with life and energy. Sollux paused the video as she opened her mouth to speak, tears starting to roll down his face. It was unfair, and he shouldn't have been the one to survive. He hid his face in his crossed arms on the desk and sobbed, shoulders shaking with grief. The pain in his heart wouldn't go away, but then he didn't want it to get better; it would be like forgetting she had been there in the first place.

He was asleep before he knew it, static black and white images flashing through his subconscious, before he found himself in the manor's entryway yet again. A few stray tears remained on his cheeks and he wiped them away. He needed to see her again, one last time.

Sollux could hear Kanaya's voice again, faint and distant. He frowned. Why was he still hearing her if she was gone? He head the voices of the soon-to-be deceased, not the already dead like Aradia had. He started to move forward, retracing his steps from earlier through the sectioned-off room and up the stairs into the hallway of staircases. As he reached the top of the stairs, he saw three shadowy figures move past the end of the hallway and into the alcove with the door. Kanaya's voice got louder and more panicky and Sollux couldn't stop from rushing to follow them. The door opened this time without difficulty and he hurried through the short corridor to the other doorway.

There were black shadows around her where she was curled up in the corner against the lattice. When he stepped completely into the room, they pulled away from her, and moved towards him menacingly. He yanked the camera up and focused on the figures, letting the camera charge. A second shadow wandered into the circle frame and he took the shot, both figures dissolving in a scattering of glowing orbs that were pulled into the camera. The third shadow fell as quickly as the first two.

He glanced at Kanaya, who had stopped shaking after the shadows were defeated. As he approached, the temperature began to drop and the air grew thick with despair and anger. She looked up and Sollux flinched back at the appearance of snake and holly tattoos crawling across her neck and face, even into her very eyes. She stood as he took a few steps back before suddenly lunging at him, grabbing his shoulders. Sollux cried out, and felt as if his life was draining away. He pushed her away, and she huddled over. He scrambled backwards, panting and shaking. She stood up once more and turned to charge again, but this time, he got the camera up in time and took a picture mid-lunge, the new bulb flashing brightly.

Kanaya cried out as she fell back in a cascade of orbs. The bulb flashed again and he took another picture, knocking her further back. She huddled over again and this time, Sollux was ready when she stood up to attack. He waited until she was nearly on top of him and took the picture when the bulb flashed again at point-blank range. Kanaya fell back with a shriek before sinking through the floor, orbs flying from the spot she'd vanished and into the camera. The tension in the air relaxed and the temperature rose.

Sollux bent over, exhausted. Sweat dripped from his face and his fingers trembled where they held the camera. He pressed one hand to his chest, feeling his heart racing. He hadn't expected Kanaya to attack him and he wondered if she was now one of the apparitions of the manor. He careful straightened and and turned to look around.

Suddenly from below, Kanaya reappeared and grabbed his arm. “You're not like me...”

Sollux jerked awake, body seizing up, and drool pooling down his arm and onto his computer desk. He sat up blearily, looking at the screen to see that the screen saver was running. He turned to reach out to the mini fridge and saw Kanaya kneeling there next to his chair. His breath caught in his throat and he froze as their gazes met.

He blinked and she was gone. His shoulder suddenly flared in pain and his muscles contracted in a spasm, sending him and his chair over with a loud crash. The pain radiated out from just his shoulder blade to his entire shoulder. He hissed and peeled back his sleeve; the weird mark had spread to cover his whole right shoulder.

“Hey, are you alright?” called out Karkat from another part of the house. A few moments later, he entered the room. Sollux yanked his sleeve back down just in time. “Oh my god, dumb ass, did you fall asleep at your computer last night?”

Karkat held out a hand to him and Sollux took it. “Maybe,” he replied quietly as Karkat pulled him up.

Karkat raised an eyebrow as he looked over at Sollux's computer screen. “You were watching it last night...”

Sollux glanced at the screen, which now showed the paused video of Aradia grinning her widest and most beautifully creepy grin. “Can we not talk about it,” he sulked.

“Fine,” Karkat replied. “You should talk with someone about it though.”

“I'm fine,” Sollux replied as he closed the video player.

Karkat gave a nasty little bark of laughter. “Ha! Yeah, you're a paragon of excellent mental fucking health! You're so fine that you can't sleep, and when you do sleep, you have nightmares. You're blaming yourself, it _wasn't your fault_!”

“I could say the same to you!” Sollux yelled back.

There was silence and Karkat's normal frown cracked into an anguished expression of loss for half a moment before it was replaced with anger. “That's a low blow. Nice one, shit head, and fuck you!”

Karkat stormed out the room, slamming the door shut behind him. Sollux cursed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He followed Karkat out of his computer room and into the kitchen where the other man was throwing stuff around angrily. “KK, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“Yeah, you shouldn't have,” Karkat replied , his voice thick. He glanced up, his eyes wet. “Next time, think before you open your damn mouth and spew bullshit all over the fucking place.”

“Okay,” Sollux replied, leaning against the door frame.

Awkward silence reigned for a moment before it was broken by Karkat sighing. “By the way, I was doing a little more investigation into that Maryam woman and when the hospital heard, they sent me her personal effects since she didn't have any surviving relatives. If you don't want to poke through it, I'll toss it out. Box is on the coffee table.”

“Thanks,” Sollux replied. Even though she had vanished from the hospital, he had a feeling that Kanaya Maryam's story wasn't quite finished. He walked into the living room and to the coffee table where the box sat. The contents were minimal; some make up, a cell phone, and what turned out to be a diary in neatly written script. He made a face; diaries were so old fashioned. He sat on the couch and began to read.

She had apparently been going mad. Her first entries were lucid enough, extremely organized and concise. As time went on, her writing became more and more disorganized. She wrote about seeing her lover and family in her sleep and seeing weird marks on herself that no one else could, and a tattooed man chasing her through an old-fashioned manor while children singing lullabies haunted her every step.

Sollux sat there after he was done, mulling it all over in his head. It was so similar to what he was experiencing, and the marks on their skin were similar in structure. They had both seen their loved ones in the manor. “Was there anything interesting?” Karkat asked from the kitchen. Sollux turned to look at the opening into the kitchen. Karkat was leaning on the counter top and for half a second, Sollux would have sworn that he could see Kanaya standing behind him as if she were washing dishes. “What?” Karkat asked, turning around to look behind him at nothing.

 “Just the sunlight playing tricks with my eyes,” Sollux replied, waving it off. He tossed the diary back into the box of Kanaya's belongings. “Want to play some League today?”

~*~

He went to bed early for once. As soon as he fell asleep, static black and white images flashed across his mind and odd sounds rang in his ears. Sollux opened his eyes, cheek pressed to bare wooden flooring in the dimly lit room with the lattice wall, and the silence echoed around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Camera - As the Fatal Frame fans know, the game calls the camera the 'Camera Obscura' but actual camera obscuras aren't even cameras, but a device used to project an image on a screen for entertainment and art. Using a camera to capture spirits is based on the old myth/wives tale that having your picture taken steals a portion of your soul.  
> Conveyor belt Sushi - I want to go to one, but they're kinda a Japanese thing and I live way across the world from one. It's what it sounds like. You sit and there's a conveyor belt that carries plates of sushi around to all the tables. Grab what you want, and you save your used plates so they know what to charge you.  
> Yamada Hana - This is the Japanese equivalent of 'Jane Doe', used to talk about unidentified people. The male version is Yamada Taro
> 
> Update schedule: I plan on updating this no later than 4 weeks from the last update. Shorter chapters will likely come quicker than that, but my goal is no longer than four weeks between updates.


	3. Hour II - The Manor of Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sollux tries to find a way into the Manor proper to chase after Aradia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday to me, so here's a present for all of you!

Nothing in the room with blinds had changed while he was awake. Sollux sat up, looking around cautiously. There wasn't any sign of Kanaya in the room, but there was a small key sitting where she last huddled after the fight. He stood carefully, making sure he still had the camera and his flashlight, and walked over to where the key lay. It was old-fashioned and a four-pointed design was etched into the bow. He instantly recognized the design from the lock on the little door under the staircase. He put it in a pocket and felt the warm wooden container of herbal medicine he'd found in his previous night in the manor. He looked around the room one more time, refraining from looking in the blinded partition of the room again, and headed out into the passage toward the door to the staircase hallway.

And nearly ran smack-dab into a charging Kanaya. He yelped and just barely managed to dodge out of her reach. “Holy fuck, you aggressive shit!” he exclaimed, backing away from her back into the room and bringing the camera to bear.

The tattoos crawling over her skin were a deeper red now and faded in and out of vision. She slowly turned around, four black shadows forming around her. Sollux peered through the viewfinder at her and the shadows moved away from her, drawing closer to him. The camera charged and as one of the shadow drew near, the circle frame reacted and he took the picture. The shadow faded away to nothing and reappeared next to Kanaya. One of the other shadows moved to his right, and another to the left. The fourth one he had lost track of though, and on a hunch, he moved forward and around one shadow, glancing behind him. The fourth one was there, upper half bowed as if it were trying to headbutt him. He looked through the camera again, snapping another picture to catch all three shadows, but they just reappeared around Kanaya and spread out again. She was apparently creating them or reviving them, but either way, they wouldn't go away with her around.

He moved closer to her, and she suddenly turned and moved towards him, hands raised to grab him. The camera charged and when the bulb flashed, he took the picture. Kanaya fell back and the bulb flashed again. He took another picture and she fell further back. The bulb flashed a third time, but Kanaya had been pushed beyond the walls of the room into the passage way and the shot took a picture of nothing. He waited for a moment for her to come back into view, but only the shadows moved toward him through the walls. He drove them back with a shot from the camera, and moved around the door frame and into the passageway. Kanaya stood there, and as he moved close, she turned to him again, tattoos reappearing as she moved near. He raised the camera again and took a picture so close up that there was nothing visible but her face and the dark red tattoos. She fell back with a cry, and scattered in a cascade of orbs.

Sollux exhaled softly and lowered the camera. He looked around carefully, already moving forward so he wouldn't be caught off guard if she came back, but the room and passageway were quiet. He made sure he still had the key in his pocket and moved toward the door. As he reached toward the door knob, he heard voices behind him. “It's not enough, we need more sacrifices...” were the only words he caught, the rest faded into a low mumble that he couldn't hear clearly.

He turned and noticed that there was a slight opening in the wall that separated the passageway from the sectioned-off area of the room. He peered through it, but there wasn't anything in there beyond the potentially occupied old futon. He shivered, his skin crawling, and moved back toward the door.

Nothing had changed about the hallway of stairs either; it was still dark and creepy to walk down. He moved past the first staircase with no problem, but when he approached the second staircase, he could see something moving down the farthest staircase and a voice murmured “Still not enough...”

Sollux paused and squinted. There wasn't any other motion at the far end of the hall, not that he could see clearly enough to be sure. He moved closer to the second set of stairs and looked up; there was a man dressed in white clothing with a funny, old-fashioned looking hat. The man didn't move and when he raised the camera, it only glowed a soft blue instead the orange that occurred with ghosts that were hostile. He took a picture, the camera's energy getting slightly stronger, but the man merely faded away into nothing. For a moment, Sollux considered going up the second set of stairs, but he still had the little door to look into first. He could always come back if need be. He continued on to the final set of stairs and descended into the room with the little door. The lock was still firmly closed, so he put the key in and twisted. It opened with a squeal of rusted metal.

On the other side of the door was a hallway that lead to the left, candles flickering in the corners. It went to the left for about another fifteen feet before turning to the left, another candle in that corner as well. Cautiously, he followed the hallway's path. As he rounded the corner, his flashlight beam fell on a wall ahead of him. A dark silhouette and white paper charms like the ones found in a shrine were illuminated by its glow. He froze, but the figure didn't move, just faded slowly like it was being bleached, and he suddenly realized that the silhouette wasn't a spirit, but a human shaped stain on the wall. He moved the beam of his flashlight over the wall and to either side. The path of the hall split left and right, making a 't' shape and the paper charms were attached to a rope that traveled along the upper wall in both directions. The rope looked almost like an electrical conduit, and he mused that he didn't want to know what it was powering if that were the case. He moved toward the intersection and saw that the dark stain and the paper charms were repeated at regular intervals down the walls on both sides.

When he entered the actual intersection, angry mumbling began, sounding like an enraged mob moments from attacking and the air was heavy with an energy that made him queasy. The hall went only a few feet down to the left before ending in a corner and to the right, it traveled twenty feet before turning as well. Candles flickered in the corners, casting the hall in dim light and shadows. Sollux sighed and decided to go to the right.

The muttering didn't change, and he could feel his body tensing in reaction to the atmosphere of the hall. He reached the end of the corridor and slowly came to a stop as he stared at the wall in front of him, his mind not exactly sure whether it believed what his eyes were telling it. There was something that looked like a desiccated hand sticking out of the wall. He stared for a moment, unsure whether he wanted to just ignore it or poke it with a stick. The camera's energy seemed to intensify as he drew close and the crawling sensation along his skin grew stronger. He checked the hall for other entities and pulled the camera up to look at the hand through the viewfinder. The circle frame was glowing blue again. He took the picture, the glow of the frame fading afterward. The mumbling seemed to get a little louder, and he looked around again, expecting something to jump out at him, but there was still nothing.

While glancing around, he noticed a section of wall that looked like it had been badly patched over. He looked closer and realized that it was another small door that had been sealed shut and painted over. There didn't seem to be a way to get in, and Sollux quietly wondered if there was something either important or nasty enough to be sealed inside. Either way, he wasn't getting into the room that that very moment. He shrugged and moved on to another corner that turned to the left. Around the corner, the hallway was much shorter and he could see it turning to the left again, making him pretty sure this hallway was just one big loop. There was a small door on the outer right side of the hall, and it opened without difficulty.

On the other side was yet another hallway, only there weren't any candles here. Without his flashlight, the hall would have been pitch black. There were two steps down to a small landing before the hallway continued in a long steep stairs leading to a lower floor. The ceiling was sharply angled as well, dropping suddenly so there was just enough space for him to walk barely. He swallowed hard and preemptively ducked his head, his pulse racing, and he followed the stairs down, feeling almost like he was back in Egypt with Aradia again and walking down stone steps to some long-dead pharaoh's tomb. When he reached the lower landing, the hallway grew even smaller. He could still fit, but he had to actually stoop slightly and move slowly. The sensation of being in a tomb increased as he walked forward in the darkness, broken only by his flashlight.

He reached what seemed to be the end of the hallway at first, but he quickly realized that the passage just grew even smaller, becoming a crawlspace. He could feel a breeze coming from the opening, so it obviously led somewhere. Gangly as he was, there was no way Sollux was could fit into such a small space; he was tall and had rather broad shoulders that would prevent him from compressing his body enough to crawl inside. He would have fit back when he was still a child, or if he had Karkat's compact frame. He turned around and walked away, writing it off as a dead end. As soon as he turned his back on the opening, he felt like someone was watching him from the tiny opening. He glanced back, but didn't see anything... though admittedly, he wasn't really trying too hard.

Re-entering the stained hallway was almost like being reborn, despite the angry muttering that was still going on. He sighed in relief at seeing the flickering light of the candles again after the incessant darkness of the passageway behind him. He was so glad he couldn't have fit in that small space. He turned to the final corner and went around it to find a normal sized door on the right side of the hallway. It too was unlocked and he pushed it open.

Sollux walked into a moonlit courtyard, snow falling over grave markers.

For a moment, he couldn't think, just staring at the scene before him. This was the courtyard he'd been in, chasing after Aradia in his daydream. In a daze, he almost ran forward, ignoring everything to try and reach the other side and the doors that were there. He nearly tripped as he passed under the torii that framed the doors, but he managed to recover and skid to a stop before ramming into them. There was a lock on the doors and he stared at the design on it, very different from the one key he had. It looked like two flowers facing each other. He cursed and kicked the doors hard, grasping the lock as if he could try to wrench it off with his bare hands. The strong metal held though and he collapsed against them, fighting back tears. He just wanted to see her one last time face to face and talk to her before he was dragged under by whatever had claimed Kanaya.

After a few moments of feeling absolutely wretched, Sollux dragged the back of his hand over his face and forced himself to stand up. He'd find the key, wherever it was. He still hadn't gone up the middle staircase in what he'd come to think of as the 'stair hallway' after all. He started to walk back toward the other side of the courtyard, but paused halfway there when he noticed a weird tingling sensation on the left side of his body. He looked at the gravestones and could see an odd shimmer in the air. He looked through the camera and as he suspected, the circle frame was glowing blue. He took the shot and nothing happened beyond the glow fading away again. After waiting a moment, he continued to retrace his steps. There was a well to the left, and he eyed it suspiciously as he looked at the area around it from a distance. Maybe the key wasn't far from its lock, but a quick search revealed nothing and he sure as shit wasn't going to look _in_ the well; he'd seen Ringu a few times too many for that.

He re-entered the stained hallway, the mumbling surrounding him once more. The tension in the hall seemed a little bit stronger than before, and Sollux felt it in his very core. His nerves sang with it, putting him on edge as he walked cautiously toward the final corner. Nothing happened as he turned it and found himself at the intersection that lead back to the small door with the four-point lock. He took a deep breath and prepared to walk down the hallway.

A man in white lunged out from the walls and would have grabbed him if Sollux hadn't stopped and backpedaled furiously into the stained hallway. The man turned and lumbered towards him. Sollux raised the camera, backing away carefully into the next section of hallway so the camera could charge. When the man reached for him again, the circle frame reacted and the bulb flashed. He took the picture, knocking the man back. The bulb flashed again, but before he could take the shot, two spectral arms wrapped around him and squeezed. He gasped and struggled against the grip, glancing back. There was a second man in white. “Fuck, two of them?” he exclaimed after he managed to break free. He sidestepped the first ghost as it tried to reach for him and turned the corner to rush down the hallway. Normally, two wasn't a bad thing; he liked the number, but not so much in this case. He spun around with camera raised high to face both men as they came through the walls and plodded down the hall toward him. The camera seemed to be charging a little bit faster than before and when the nearest lunged and the bulb flashed, he took the shot.

Both ghosts were in the circle frame and both seemed to take damage from the picture. The camera's bulb flashed again and he took a second shot. The closer ghost faded away in a shower of orbs, but the second continued to move toward him. The camera wouldn't be charged in time, so Sollux pulled the camera away from his face and moved further down the hall. He turned and waited for the man to approach, but the ghost merely moved to one side, ducking behind the walls. Sollux followed it's position using the filament. “Of course,” he muttered darkly. “Ghosts don't have to deal with physics, God, this is stupid.”

The man popped through the wall right next to him and he could only get a partial shot, just enough to drive the ghost back. He backed up down the hallway, checking to make sure there wasn't a third man behind him. He took aim again, and finally finished off the shade with a string of pictures. After the final photo, he heard something hit the ground with a thud. “What the hell...” he muttered.

He moved to where the man had been before he vanished. Sitting on the wooden floor was a stone smaller than his palm. He picked it up, turning it over. It had a raised line, like the kanji for 'one' on one side and a raised bump on the other side, like it fit somewhere. He put it in his pocket; it wasn't a key, but he just might need it. His fingers brushed against the wooden container of herbal medicine and he pulled it out to use. The 'friendly hug' from the second man in white had been draining and quite painful.

The hallway still echoed with the angry voices, but it was no longer as loud. Sollux took a final look around and cautiously moved toward the small door. This time he remained unmolested by spectral entities and made it to the door and up the stairs without incident. The middle staircase led upwards and Sollux started climbing. When he reached the top of the stairs, there was another man in white standing there. He held up the camera, prepared to fight the apparition, but the man merely shouted something garbled and ran to the right and through the wall. Sollux blinked in surprise, half expecting the man to come charging back out at him, but nothing happened. He finished walking up the stairs and looked around. There were wooden panels leaning against the walls, and a small door in the wall the man had run through. When he tried to open the door, it wouldn't budge but he noticed a small panel set in the wall beside the door.

The panel had a series of connected holes in it, and two stones with the kanji for two and three were already set in the panel, connected to a mechanism he could just barely see through the holes. After a but if fumbling, he found the setting that the stone he had picked up fit into. The door still didn't move though, and Sollux sighed, rolling his eyes, and glared at the panel again. He discovered he could slide the stones from hole to hole, like some kind of puzzle. “Why am I dreaming in stupid video game clinches?” he muttered angrily. “I _hate_ puzzles.”

It only took a few moments to figure it out though; it turned out to be a pretty simple sequence. There was a heavy clunk and, the door swung open with no problems when Sollux tested the handle. The door creaked as it swung inward and he stepped through it and onto a platform that overlooked the graveyard two stories below. There was a narrow, slightly angled tile overhang a step down from the platform that lined the walls of the courtyard. In the wall to the right of the platform, there was a second platform over the tiled overhang and another small door. Sollux eyed the overhang suspiciously. It was only a short step down, and it should support his weight. He would just have to go slowly to avoid slipping on the tile.

He gingerly stepped out on the tiles, praying that there wouldn't be any nasty surprises. The ground was pretty far down and he didn't want to test the urban myth about dying in your dreams. It was slow going; the tile was already smooth and the light fall of snow was not helping. He finally made it across the narrow path and onto the other platform with his nerves on edge. The door was unlocked and he threw himself into the dusty room on the other side.

When he looked around the room, it was mostly bare, save for a few boxes stacked on the far side of the room. He moved toward the stacks and noticed there was something sitting on top of them. It was a key. Sollux looked around cautiously, he couldn't be  _that_ lucky, there had to be some kind of catch to this. He picked up the key and examined it. The bow of the key was engraved with the dual flower design he saw on the lock in the courtyard below.

The temperature dropped as tension sang up his back, and Sollux moved out of the way just in time to avoid being grabbed by a man in white. “Of course it's not that easy...” he muttered to himself. He considered just running away, but there would be no way he could move fast enough on the tile and walls meant nothing to a ghost. He clenched his hands around the camera and turned to face the man.

Fortunately, this enemy seemed to be alone and was no faster or smarter than his brethren. Sollux quickly dispatched him with a few shots from the camera and the room's atmosphere returned to normal. Sollux checked to make sure there wasn't anything else in the room and exited back out to the overhang of the courtyard. He was making his way carefully across the tile when he happened to glance down into the courtyard. He saw some movement down on the ground level and tried to get a better look. His foot slid on some ice and he fell, nearly slipped off the overhang entirely before he could stop himself. Belly-down on the tiles with a much clearer view, he realized the motion was Aradia walking towards the far-off doors. “AA!” he called out, but she faded from view once she passed under the torii in front of the doorway. He pushed himself back from the edge of the overhang and used the wall to steady himself and get back up. He had to get to those doors  _now_ .

He made it to the other platform without any further trouble and nearly ran down the first set of stairs, then the second and through the little door. In the stained corridor, he kept moving, going straight to the tall door leading out into the graveyard, and practically rant into the arms of a waiting man in white.

Sollux yelped in surprise and backed away from the man before his arms closed around him. He moved to the right, the side with the well, his heart racing. He aimed the camera at him, both anxious and angry. “I don't have the time to deal with your bullshit!” he snarled.

In the open area of the courtyard, the fight didn't last long at all. The camera had plenty of time to charge and there weren't any walls getting in the way of his shots. Even so, after the man faded into the orbs of light that were pulled into the camera, Sollux paused to rest near the well he'd moved back toward during the fight. His body was trembling so hard with the aftereffects of adrenaline, that he wasn't sure he could walk without first taking a moment, so he leaned on the edge of the well.

Which was also the exact moment a young woman popped up over the lip of the well, one hand stretched out, reaching for him. He screamed in terror, dropping the camera as he tripped over his own feet trying to get away. He landed on his back hard, driving the air from his body. Raising one arm to cover his face, Sollux braced himself, expecting her to attack him. When nothing happened, he looked up just in time to see the young woman sliding back into the well, a silent, happy grin on her face. She gave him a little wave of fingers before fading away.

He laughed, nervously at first, though it soon grew a bit hysterical. Despite the edge of hysteria, some of the tension in him eased away. After a little while, he got himself under control and sat up. The camera lay on the ground where it had fallen, and he checked it over to make sure it was undamaged. He stood up, brushing the snow and dirt from his pants, and continued more cautiously toward the locked door on the other side of the courtyard. The key fit with no problem and he unlocked the doors and pushed them open.

On the other side of the doorway was a foot-well for one's shoes before the floor rose to the level of the foyer proper. Across the room from the door he came through, there was an opening that led into a hallway. Walking in slow motion away from him was Aradia. He reached out to her, but the faint sounds of children singing softly reached his ears...

...And he opened his eyes, stretched out on his back in his bed. He stared, unseeing, at the room's ceiling, as the soothing sound of rain falling outside filled the room. Moments later, his shoulder and back flared in pain, and he writhed, gripping at the sheets and kicked at the blankets tangled around his legs. When the pain receded, he was breathing in short fast gasps and his eyes were scrunched tightly closed. He shuddered and opened them. He didn't want to look to see how much further the tattoo-like marks had spread. The dimly lit room made him want to roll over and go back to sleep, or maybe just lay there and listen to the rain fall. Lazily, he rubbed sleep from his eyes, then rolled over and reached out to his nightstand to grab his phone. It was almost noon and he had two unread emails, neither with an address in the sender field. He sighed heavily and looked at the attachments. One was a picture of the graveyard and the other showed a hand sticking out of the stained wall. Sollux felt a nasty headache forming and closed the phone sharply before tossing it back on the nightstand.

After a few minutes, Sollux managed to find the energy to roll out of bed and groggily look for clean clothes. His stomach gurgled at him and he hoped there were still some noodles left over from the other night that he could reheat. He was halfway out the room when his forgotten phone rang behind him. The ringtone told him that it was Karkat calling, so he turned around to answer it. “Hello?”

“Wow, you're actually awake,” was the response he got. “I'm going to have to make offerings at the local shrine or something, it's obviously a miracle sent by the spirits. Sollux Captor is awake and cognizant before noon.”

“Shut up, KK,” Sollux growled. “It's not that surprising.” Karkat made a non-committal noise. “What do you want, asshole?”

“Nothing, if you're going to be like that,” Karkat replied with a sniff. “I _was_ going to tell you about getting Maryam's hospital records, after having to spend fifteen minutes being flirted at by a nurse three times my age and nowhere close to my preferences. I even had to consider accepting the offer to go get drinks, before she'd release her grip on them, but that's fine. It's not like they're on my desk with a printout of the news article about a certain vanishing patient, waiting for some ungrateful dickhead to drag his lazy ass out of bed. I fucking guess you'll just have to do without.”

Sollux laughed quietly. “Well, it is a good thing you didn't do all that, someone might think you care.”

“Damn straight. Why would I care?” When Sollux laughed again, Karkat growled, “Fuck you. You are the worst excuse for a human being I've ever had the misfortune to meet, Sollux.”

“KK...” Sollux replied quietly.

A moment of silence and Karkat said sheepishly, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.”

“I know, and yes, we're still friends,” Sollux replied, forestalling the next question that he knew was going to come out of Karkat's mouth.

“Okay,” Karkat replied, still a bit quiet. “Do something productive today, okay? Something besides the website.”

“Sure...” Sollux replied. “Say, can you do me a favor?”

“After the last one nearly landed you in fucking jail?”

“Well, I can't help that... anyway, I got two more pictures. Same set up, no info in the sender field. The pictures aren't people this time though, more like... I dunno, funeral customs? They're kinda creepy to be honest.”

Karkat made a noise of interest. “Well, send them to me, but I'm not making any promises. You're probably going to have better luck asking a bunch of stupid, mouth breathing otaku on some image forum or something. Creepypasta and funeral customs are right up the Internet's alley.”

“Fine, I'll check online too.” Sollux conceded. “Do you want me to cook dinner tonight?”

“Fuck no,” Karkat deadpanned. “I've told you, you aren't allowed to make anything more involved than a sandwich after the kimchi incident. I'll be home in time to prevent whatever disaster you'd end up making of the kitchen.”

Sollux rolled his eyes; the kimchi wasn't that bad, Karkat's taste buds just weren't refined enough to appreciate a good batch of kimchi. It wasn't like he made _that_ bad of a mess. “Okay, I guess I'll see you tonight then.” He hung up, slid his phone in his pants pocket, and stretched. He'd take a look at the file, maybe order some take out if there weren't any noodles left.

The house was almost eerily quiet as he left his room, the only sound the ever-present noise of rain hitting the roof of the house. He hummed tunelessly just to fill the void and walked down and across the hall to the door of Karkat's room and entered.

The first thing that a person might notice about Karkat's room was that the walls were covered with movie posters. Most were Bollywood films, but there were a few Japanese and American movies mixed in as well. The overwhelming majority of them, however, not matter their source, were romantic comedies. The second thing a person would probably notice was the shelves of romance novels and racks of DVDs that took up the remaining wall space. There was a computer desk with Karkat's laptop sitting on it and a Western style full-sized bed piled high with blankets and pillows pushed into one corner. In the opposite corner was a dresser.

Sollux walked over to the desk and found a file sitting next to the laptop. He grabbed it and turned to walk away, but a picture frame caught his eye. It held a photograph of Karkat and Gamzee back when they had lived in India. Both looked happy, or at least mostly happy in Karkat's case. The dark circles under his friend's eyes weren't nearly as pronounced when the picture was taken compared to now. There was almost an air of contentment, something that Sollux hadn't seen in Karkat since Gamzee went missing. Sollux pursed his lips; Karkat seemed to hold it together pretty well most of the time, acting like nothing was wrong, but to someone who knew him, it was clear how much of a facade that was.

He tucked the file under his arm and left the room. No point in dwelling on it when there wasn't a way to make things better any time soon. He walked downstairs and into the kitchen, where, as it turned out, there were some leftovers from the other day. He flipped through the folder while waiting for his food to heat.

First came Kanaya's medical records. The doctor had noted that she had been brought in with a few cuts and bruises, and her worst complaint had been severe dehydration. Her physical condition had improved after a few days, but her mental condition worsened in equal measure. The doctor overseeing her case had diagnosed her with acute paranoia and PTSD after they found her hurting herself trying to avoid falling asleep. She was complaining of hallucinations and gradually became less responsive to stimulus, muttering to herself while awake and humming a tune that one of the nurses recognized as an old lullaby from the Mutsu region of Japan, where Kanaya , during a moment of clarity, said she'd never even visited.

The news article was less interesting, merely stating that Kanaya had disappeared from the hospital and that they were working with authorities to improve security. Sollux made an annoyed noise; talk about shutting the barn door after the horse had run off. The microwave beeped at him and he shut the folder, a sour expression on his face.

~*~

It was still raining when Karkat returned home, nearly an hour after Sollux had been expecting him. Sollux heard the door open, the sound of rain getting louder briefly, and then shut, now with Karkat cursing up a storm of his own. Sollux pushed away from his computer, where he was working on a coding side job for a local karaoke bar's website, and walked down the hall to their foyer. Karkat was soaked, dripping water all over the entry wall as he took off his shoes, bundled up tight in his jacket, one arm wrapped almost protectively around his middle. “Are you okay?” Sollux asked, eyeing the way he was holding himself speculatively. “Did you get mugged on the way home?”

Karkat paused, face flushing red, and he replied, “No, I didn't get mugged on the way home...” he gasped and something under his jacket moved. “Fuck, stop squirming...”

A little kitty head suddenly popped out from the collar of the jacket, olive eyes wide and fur sopping wet, and cut Karkat off with a loud meow and a paw to the face. Sollux blinked and without thinking said, “What the hell is that?”

Karkat's flush grew redder. “It's a cat, dumb ass!” he replied in a flustered tone. “I saw her in that alley that usually floods. I couldn't just leave her there and she was already soaked through.” The cat meowed again and leaned up to headbutt his chin. “Stop that, I'll feed you after I finish talking to this dumb ass and dry us off.”

The cat meowed pitifully this time and Sollux snickered. “You heard the lady, KK. Hop to it.”

“Shut up and get me a damn towel.” Karkat replied hotly.

Sollux laughed again and turned around to walk to the bathroom for a towel. Karkat had already hung his jacket up when he returned, supporting the small body of the cat with one arm. “Are you actually planning on keep her?”

Karkat frowned. “Would that be a problem?”

Sollux shrugged and handed him the towel. “I'm not taking care of her.”

Karkat wrapped the cat in the towel and it struggled until its head was free. “No fucking shit, I wouldn't trust you to take care of a house plant.” He paused, making an odd face before sneezing. The cat nearly wiggled out of his arms in surprise. “Damn, I'm going to get sick if I don't get dry. Here, hold her for a minute.”

Sollux found himself juggling an armful of cat as Karkat shuffle-dripped down the hallway. “You're getting water everywhere!” He called out.

“Mrrrow?!” the cat interjected, struggling to break free of his arms.

Sollux yelped in surprise as a clawed paw smacked his nose hard enough to break skin, and then cat was suddenly wriggling free of both the towel and his arms. She hit the floor and took off after Karkat with a questioning warble of a meow. “Hey, get back here!” Sollux yelled, hand pressed over his bleeding nose, chasing after her down the hall.

The cat paused at the bathroom door, which was firmly shut, sniffed briefly at the base, and scratched at it. Sollux caught up just as the door opened enough for Karkat to stick his head out. The cat slid in like it belonged in there and her mews echoed the in the tiled space. Karkat scowled at him. “You couldn't even wa... ahhhKTSCH! Fuck, you couldn't even watch for five seconds?”

“Shut up,” Sollux replied. “Obviously she has horrible taste if she prefers your company.”

“Fu... ahktsh! Fuck you, she obviously has excellent taste! Start some water in the tea kettle for me.”

Sollux paused and considered the expression on Karkat's face. Despite looking like a drown rat, there was an expression of happiness on his face that hadn't been there the night before. He smirked, and merely replied, “Sure, KK, if that's what you want.”

~*~

Despite sleeping until noon, it was barely ten in the evening when Sollux found himself getting drowsy again. He yawned and glanced over at Karkat, who was stretched out on the couch, reading a romance novel and petting the now fluffy-dry, purring cat in his lap. A cup of ginger tea sat on the side table, no longer steaming. It was the third one Karkat had made that night. Sollux started to move his character to a safe area to log out at and said, “I think I'm going to lay down.”

Karkat blinked and sniffled. “Already?” he questioned with a frown.

Sollux rubbed his eyes; why were they itchy all of a sudden? “Yeah, I'm not feeling well.”

“Do you want me to wake you in the morning? You've been sleeping a lot lately.”

Sollux shook his head. “No, that's okay. If I'm tired, I should probably rest. Might be coming down with something.”

Karkat nodded. “Well, if you think so.” The cat in his lap shifted and looked up at Sollux, her olive green eyes blinking open and closed slowly. Her eyes suddenly tracked to the left, behind Sollux, and her gray striped fur started to puff up slightly as she growled. Karkat looked at her in surprise. “Hey, what are you growling about?”

He moved to pet the cat to soothe her down, but she jumped up in surprise the moment his hand touched her fur, hissed, then jumped to the floor only to scurry under the couch. Sollux risked a glance behind him, but there was nothing there. “What the hell was that about...”

“Fuck if I know,” Karkat replied, surprised look on his face.

Sollux rubbed his nose; the itching had spread. “Alright, I'm off to bed then.”

“Sleep well,” Karkat replied.

Sollux nodded and closed his laptop down. He made his way up to his bedroom, rubbing his face as the itchiness continued. In his darkened bedroom, he couldn't decide if the sound of rain falling was creepy or soothing. There was a sudden noise from his closet, like something had fell, but when he checked, there was nothing amiss. He got under the covers, still rubbing his eyes, and was asleep before he knew it.

There was an altar, or was it a shrine, and three young girls surrounded a figure huddled on the floor. He watched from inside a hanging cage and they were hammering on stakes below, the sound filling the emptiness within him. The graves multiplied and the door at the end of the hallway slowly opened.

Sollux opened his eyes, standing upright in the middle of the entryway past the graveyard as if he'd never woken. He could still see Aradia walking slowly away from him, but she was starting to fade from view. He took a step forward and called out “Wait, AA!”, but she was already gone.

The only response, the only sound, was the high pitched voices of young children softly singing a tune, the words barely audible. “Sleep Priestess, lie in peace...”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://ladysekh.tumblr.com/) or [deviantArt](http://ladysekhmetka.deviantart.com/)


End file.
